Christmas Decorating and Bazaar

It’s a tradition here at Schutz for the residents to get together and decorate the dinning room and put up a Christmas tree together. We enjoyed some yummy hot coco, decorated some sugar cookies and sang along with some Holiday music. I giggle every time I get “Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow” stuck in my head. “Let it sand storm, Let it sand storm, Let it sand storm,” just doesn’t flow as well.
On Friday several of us went down to Cairo for a large Christmas Bazaar put on by the Cairo American College. There were over fifty vendors there, most selling handmade crafts a few selling Christmas crafts. Some of the crafts were made by the nuns of the Coptic Church, some were NGO’s who teach the Bedouin women a craft to earn a living, and some were crafts made out of the recycled materials from the Zabbalin village in Coptic Cairo. (see previous post for explanation). The cards they made out of recycled paper was probably the most purchased item at the bazaar, I was very impressed with their quality, and to make them even better, each was embroidered with an Egyptian or Christmas scene. I really enjoyed my shopping trip and when crazy buying local crafts. I got some exquisite glass blown figurines, a clay figuring of two women greeting each other from a nun of the Coptic Church, and embroidered purse, and my pride and joy of the trip is a huge wall hanging completely hand embroidered with Egyptian scenes. They also had some great food, including bagels which are a huge treat for us here. We all bought some to take home to our husbands since none of us bought anything for them.

We stopped at a nice restaurant before the drive back to Alex and had a lovely dinner. While we were there, some of the men that came along with us decided they wanted to place a Drinkies order. Drinkies is the alcohol store in Egypt. And yes, you call and place an order and they deliver to you in a matter of minutes. In Cairo they carry a brand of beer called Luxor that they don’t carry in Alexandria. We really confused the Drinkies store as well as our waiter of why guest in the restaurant were calling to place an order. But after a few laughs and an explanation that we can’t get Luxor in Alex we had three cases of beer delivered right to our table.